Hi all,

    I posted a message some months back regarding sometimes seeing
renderings speeding up dramatically for no apparent reason and got little
response. Today, I finally found out how to reproduce this and I've done
some tests.
    First of all, the secret is to click on a menu while rendering. It
doesn't matter which one as long as that menu remains opened during the
render. This has the affect of speeding up all renders on my machine. In
some cases the a speed up of 30% but more often 5% to 10%. In any case a
significant speed up.
    One place where it makes an amazing difference is during the output and
scrolling of the message window. If you have any scene with a lot of #render
statments or are doing an animation you have to try this.

    There are obvious problems though. The first is that this removes your
ability to multitask. You mouse must remain over the opened window. I also
noticed that the output to the message window is sometimes corrupted, or
rather sometimes lines are missing entirely.
    I'm running with windows NT 4.0. I'd appreciate it if Win9X people could
test this as well. If this exists across the board I think it should count
as a bug and be reported to the POV Team. I don't know about you but I'd
love a consistant 10% speedup.
    I recommend everyone try the standard vect2.ini scene as a test. The
difference was astounding on my machine.


    Here are some results of a little testing.



vect2.ini at 160X120 (60 frames animation):

situation                        time secs
max'd window, no menu, no disp   177
max'd window, w/ menu, no disp   119
min'd window, n/a    , no disp   171


blank.pov at 6400X4800 (no objects, just black and 2 light sources):

situation                        time secs
no menu                          240
w/ menu                          180


skyvase.pov (with POVBench settings):

situation                        time secs
max'd window, no menu, no disp   95
max'd window, w/ menu, no disp   90
min'd window, n/a    , no disp   96
max'd window, no menu, w/ disp   97
max'd window, w/ menu, w/ disp   92



--Rainer

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Are you by any chance using the mosaic preview or radiosity on these
renders?  If so than I think this is either fixed or will be soon.

-Mike

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Mike wrote:
> 
> Are you by any chance using the mosaic preview or radiosity on these
> renders?  If so than I think this is either fixed or will be soon.

The effect can be seen with all types of renders, regardless if you
use mosaic preview, radiosity or not. It is more pronounced on scenes
that render fast, since it is the time that is needed to update
the title bar of the window. But don't ask me why it speeds up,
when you click a menu or the title bar.

Markus
-- 

 Ich nicht eine Sekunde!!!" H. Heinol in Val Thorens

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On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 13:45:51 +0900, "Rainer Mager"
<-nos### [at] golcom> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
[snip]

Hiya

>    One place where it makes an amazing difference is during the output and
>scrolling of the message window. If you have any scene with a lot of #render
>statments or are doing an animation you have to try this.
>
>    There are obvious problems though. The first is that this removes your
>ability to multitask. You mouse must remain over the opened window. I also
>noticed that the output to the message window is sometimes corrupted, or
>rather sometimes lines are missing entirely.

Unless you're displaying a preview window which the opened menu covers
(partially or completely) I've no idea why selecting a menu would
speed up the render. Of course, the POv documentation points out that
not having a preview window open will speed up renders a bit - as will
minimising it (or, presumably, covering it with a menu). this affects
fast renders more than it affects slow renders, and will also have
greater impact on a machine with a slow video card than a fast one
(though measuring the effect would be a pain).

Scrolling of the message window, similarly, should be faster if
there's less scrolling to go on (such as when a large chunk of the
message window is covered by a menu). As for corruption of the message
window if/when you do this - that *could* be a problem with the video
driver, but I'm sure I've seen it happen too (I just can't remember
what video card I was using at the time, and most of my renders are
done in my absence because they take too long).

Hopefully there's at least 1/4 of an answer hidden in the above.


Cheers,

Cliff Bowman
Why not pay my 3D Dr Who site a visit at
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/7855/
PS change ".duffnet" to ".net" if replying via e-mail

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